UC regent calls for operations overhaul

SAN FRANCISCO -- In a sharp critique of University of California operations, Board of Regents Chairman Richard C. Blum called Wednesday for a major overhaul of the “outmoded and dysfunctional” way the UC administration operates.

In a six-page paper sent to his fellow regents, Blum called for restructuring the UC president’s office to eliminate arcane procedures that have existed for decades and often hinder decisions, costing the university millions of dollars.

“Why is it so hard to make broad-scale progress toward our goals?” Blum asked. “I believe the fundamental problem is an overgrown UC administrative infrastructure that substitutes motion for progress.”

He also proposed creating a scholarship fund of up to $1 billion to help students cope with rising fees and called for improving UC’s relations with the governor and Legislature, who have steadily reduced the university’s share of the state budget. The state budget finally approved Tuesday by the Legislature after a 51-day deadlock calls for raising student fees at state colleges and universities as much as 10%.

Blum, who made a personal fortune buying companies and reorganizing them, said in an interview that the 10-campus UC system should cut back its administrative staff and devote more resources to education, in particular raising faculty salaries to be competitive with other universities.

Streamlining UC’s construction practices to speed up the approval process for new buildings and relying on outside contractors to build them could save the university many millions of dollars, he said.

“I am quite critical of the way the operations of the university have been run,” Blum said. “There are some functions there, nobody knows why they exist. We need to make decisions quickly. We need to be nimble and we are anything but.”

UC President Robert Dynes announced 10 days ago that he would step down in June for personal reasons. His announcement came shortly after he met privately with Blum to discuss Blum’s plan for restructuring the university administration.

Blum, who is married to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, would not comment on whether he encouraged Dynes to step down.

In his paper, Blum said the office of the president “should become a model for transformation to efficiency and service, rather than the frequent butt of jokes and cynicism.”

While UC searches for a new president, the management of daily operations has been assumed by Provost and Executive Vice President Wyatt R. Hume, a leading candidate to take over the president’s post.

Hume said he supported Blum’s proposal and would present a plan of action to the regents in the near future.

“I welcome Chairman Blum’s paper as a call to action, and we intend to act on it energetically,” Hume said in a statement issued by his office.

“We must reinvigorate our administrative structure, particularly at the Office of the President, so that we operate with clarity and direction, provide effective service to the campuses, and establish greater understanding and trust with the public we serve.”

Dynes’ presidency was tarnished by a scandal in which he approved millions of dollars in perks and incentives for certain administrators and faculty members without getting the regents’ approval or providing public notice.

But Blum said that amount pales in comparison to the money wasted by unneeded bureaucracy.

“Everyone is jumping up and down about the couple million that was given out,” he said. “No one has been paying attention to the tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions, that are wasted because we don’t build sensibly.”

Blum, who took over as chairman of the regents in March, said at the time that he would try to use his skills as a corporate takeover artist to change the way business is done at UC.

Among his proposals Wednesday were lifting arbitrary debt caps to speed campus building projects, reducing cash reserves that are kept unnecessarily high and eliminating millions of dollars in unnecessary or duplicative administration.

Some of the cost savings will be relatively easy to find and quick to implement, he said. “I am of the belief that there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit.”

The idea of reducing staff, he said, is “distasteful,” but job cuts would be hard to avoid in restructuring an operation that has not been overhauled in more than 40 years.

“This is unusual for me. I am a growth and strategic guy,” he said. “I have never gone in with a plan to cut way back. Why am I into it this time? Because it’s necessary.”

Some of the savings could be used, he added, to raise campus staff salaries.

Blum called on the university to develop a clear strategic vision and to pursue the same high quality in its administration that it strives for in its academic programs.

“Cumbersome and enormously expensive layers of bureaucracy have been added over the years, many of which may no longer make sense -- if indeed they ever did,” Blum wrote. “Unless the University seriously and accountably commits itself to a new direction, we risk losing the perpetual battle for excellence in many areas.”

richard.paddock@latimes.com